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NEW PAGANISM. 



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BY 



DEYDEN MINOE. 





NEW PAGANISM. 



% jfetfre. 



BY 



DKYDEN MINOE.,^a 



< ; 



LONDON: 

WILLIAM KIDGWAY, 169 PICCADILLY. W. 

1875. 



Price Two Shillings, 



TO THE PUBLIC. 



It is perhaps superfluous, but it may be well, 
to state that the criticisms on some contemporaries 
contained in the pages of " New Paganism " relate 
to public acts and opinions alone. The prc- 
pounders of objectionable theories are too often 
themselves an honourable contradiction to their 
own principles to allow of any conclusions from 
speculative doctrines to private conduct. 

The Author 



NEW PAGANISM. 



Whereas the British Nation is Divine, 
Or at the least the nearest to a God, 
Of which progressive Reason offers sign; 
And whereas ev'ry conscience shonld incline 
Before the State's most holy wink or nod ; 
And whereas it was said that wide mankind, 
Most sad to tell, is to this gospel blind, 
How better should the Bard his trust fulfil 
And serve the potent Universum's will, 
Than if he should in pious verse relate 
The fresh refurbished worship of the State ? 
But first my invocation let me make, 
And for my guardian mentor let me take — 
who but he, that shifty, various man, 
Who still shows purpose as his thoughts we scan ; 
That whirligig of public scenes, that vane, 
That weathercock which turns and turns amain. 



A Tory hot, a Radical sincere, 

Alternately to Pope and Bismarck dear, 

He sets his cap as public currents veer, 

And all the while can pull so long a face 

His rival used to curse his serious grace. 

Come then, great Gladstone, thee do I implore, 

Thee I beseech upon my muse to pour 

Some benediction of thy counsel sage, 

Part of the prudence of thy practised age. 

Unto thy poet grant thy solemn sense 

Of how the crowd is tickled with pretence ; 

Teach unto him that useful art to seize 

Which once could Papist and Dissenter please, 

Could ruling elders guide and drive like sheep, 

And lull Eome's Cardinals in honied sleep. 

What though there circle round a rumour dark, 

" For once our Gladstone overshot his mark/' 

What though a Harcourt enviously strain 

At thine expense a footing sure to gain. 

Faithful to thee as Xews or Telegraph 

At boding rumours I afford to laugh. 

Too deeply rooted in this British land 

The hate of every clerical command, 

Too strong the sense which makes each layman 

feel 
How rude is fasting to the body's weal; 
Though Magna Charta and the Bill of Eights 
Should sink to country cousin's London sights, 
The twin palladia of the Briton's home 
Are love of bellv and the dread of Rome. 



In good old days ere Christian times and things, 
When might was right and kings were truly kings, 
One saving maxim held the world in awe — 
The Prince's pleasure sets the people's law. 
The gordian knots of national belief 
Were solved by edict of the civil chief. 
At what high shrine the multitude should bow, 
And whether venerate a horse or cow ; 
Whether the cruel Mars should rule the age, 
Or Venus Meretrix be most the rage ; 
Whether arenas should be soaked with gore, 
Or orgies acted to the Goddess- Whore : 
The pious doubt was settled at a stroke, 
The people worshipped as the monarch spoke, 
Crowded the circus mercy to refuse, 
Or rushed with equal ardour to the stews. 
Blest times to sighing laymen ever dear, 
Blest times which Greg and Stephen both revere ! 
Then could my Bismarck satisfy his heart, 
Grand as Sejanus on a throne apart, 
Without one cleric with his will to cope, 
Without a Windhorst and without a pope. 
Then could my Gladstone smooth his brow severe, 
For his allegiance cease at length to fear, 
Perform his kotow to the supreme State 
Nor once feel tempted to expostulate. 
Supremest State ! to thee we lift our eyes, 
Supremest State ! to thee our anthems rise, 
Supremest State ! Nor shall our praises quail 
Because some Christian notions still prevail 

b 2 



Which mock at Science and the sounding skill 
That streams exhaustless from a Pall Mall quill. 
A Pagan sty ! some Jesuit may say. 
Who heeds the wrath of Jesuit to-day ? 
Back to your cells, you Vaticanic brood, 
Your Way of Sorrows and your Holy Rood. 
Cease, cease at length your pointings to the skies, 
Here on this earth our only jewel lies. 
Pagan, forsooth ! What else to-day are we? 
Better than Pagan who can hope to be ? 
The taunt you fling hath had its only shame 
While men still trusted your Redeemer came. 
Fond womenkind and men more weak than they 
May heed your talk, the world will cry you Nay. 
And hearken, priest, the world is master still ; 
While life's pulse beats, the Strong One works his 

will, 
While life's stream flows the Strong One drinks his 

fill. 
And what betides the weak ? the weak must fall, 
As they have fallen ever one and all, 
Down at the feet of Force to crawl and toil ; 
To pinch, to fast, to hunger and to moil, 
To fatten with their sweat the Strong One's soil. 
In ancient days there groaned the servile crowd, 
In modern days, though now we cant more loud, 
The self-same serfs to self-same office bowed. 
Great Caesar had his gladiator- shows, 
Where men hacked men in columns, squares and rows, 
While countless eyes smiled on the blood and blows. 



Thought you to stop them when your shaven 

fool, 
Sick with some crazes of his penance rule, 
Flung in upon the scene that Roman day 
And strove to part the hireling wretches' fray ? 
The gazing laymen with rich slaughter drunk 
Straight stoned him down till bruised and brained 

he sunk. 

Telemachus, reactionary monk ! 

Have we not still our shows of stabbing slaves, 
Have we not sports for heaping bloody graves, 
The thrust, the gash, the shriek, the dying glare, 
The fields of dead, the orphan's wild despair, 
The nations' grief while swollen tyrants scoff ? 
Ask iron Bismarck or sleek Gortschakoff. 
Those tiresome priests ! They almost spoiled the 



g ; 



ame 



And would have spoiled it but our Luther came, 
With their death terrors and their prate of God, 
The proudest smiting with their ghostly rod. 
From that unhappy hour when Const antine 
Had dreamed he saw a glorious cross to shine 
In presage of the triumph o'er the foe, 
And, grateful dolt, had bent his pride so low 
As on the top of Caesar's awful crown 
To place the shameful thing from which hung 

down 
In thirst and torment Jewish Mary's Son, — 
From that portentous hour the Christ had won, 
The Civil State's omnipotence was done. 



And that omnipotence was sapped before, 

Was sapped, and undermined and shaken sore. 

There was no martyr who his witness bore — 

No tender virgin and no hoary priest 

Consumed by fire or broken by the beast, 

Sooner than swerve from Christian Faith the least — 

But in the State's supremacy made breach, 

And as brisk Falck and supple Lasker preach 

Did flattest revolution flatly teach. 

Immortal monarchs of the byegone time, 

Whose words were dogmas throughout ev'ry clime, 

Caligula, Vitellius, and all 

Who made mankind the base and abject thrall 

Of your most base and abject vice and crime, 

Ye Pontiff Caesars what a change was there 

When Christ's high standards waved in upper air, 

When bursting from her gloomy catacomb 

And narrow chambers of her penal home 

The Mother Church her patent wide unfurled 

And claimed to guide the conscience of a world. 

Conscience, forsooth ! The thrice obnoxious word. 

Where is the ruler, emperor or lord. 

Or Able Man, as dim Carlyle would say 

In hero-hymning, most kick-thankful way, 

But must revolt against the foul pretence 

To rob dominion of its sweetest sense, 

The sense superb of forcing men to think 

Not what they hold, but that from which they shrink 7 

Of forcing men to do not what may bring 

The people good, but what exalts the king ? 



Take the large license of the State away, 

And who would be a statesman for a day ? 

Take wanton wars and boastful triumph shows, 

Take lusts and hates that make the nations foes, 

The cruel conquest and the vengeance fierce, 

The venomed wounds that generations pierce, 

The venomed wrongs that turn men's hearts to fire, 

The annexations and enslavements dire ; 

Fell pride expel, and limit brutal might, 

Teach mobs and monarchs the respect of right, 

That no success confounds unjust and just, 

That public honours are but public trust, 

That peoples are still members of mankind, 

And in its Maker earth its Judge will find : 

Do this, do all that Popes and priests would do, 

And soaring statesmen what is left for you ? 

What but to tend with unassuming care 

The march of public peace and plenty fair ; 

To guard the labours of productive skill 

In field and farm and factory and mill 5 

To foster commerce, crafts, and honest trade, 

Endow sound learning, lend to genius aid ; 

To watch incessant o'er the public health 

And deem a sturdy race the truest wealth; 

Only to rule by quiet folk's accord, 

And be the nation's steward, not its lord; 

To live, content to know and have believed 

That thousands else might have as much achieved ; 

To die, in pious hope again to rise 

And get the good man's guerdon in the skies. 



To such complexion of politic thought 

Conceive my Bismarck's occupation brought : 

His barracks shrivelled to night-watchman's box, 

His instinct nice for slaying men in flocks 

Sunk down to draining fens and blasting rocks. 

His strongholds levelled into open marts, 

For his loud shells the hum of busy arts, 

For guns and tumbrils creaking country carts, 

For mighty plans the world's applause to draw, 

Police and privies, necessary law. 

Those grov'lling priests ! Who can due homage pay 

To each strong Bismarck of a former day, 

That still hath helped to keep such foes at bay ; 

In spite of Rome with dauntless arm hath met 

Their shaveling creed, and saved to Europe yet 

Its pauper swarms, its blood-tax and its debt, 

Its monstrous armies and its fleets in scores, 

Its lechers, its divorces, and its whores, 

Its stock exchanges and baronial Jews, 

Its British shippers rich by drowning crews, 

Its opium factors and Manchester size, 

Its Stage, its Drink, its Gospel mission lies, 

Its reptile journals, its Swineburnian rhymes, 

Its Berlin correspondent of the Times, 

Its culture-rant by which true culture pines, 

Its Erie Railways and its Emma Mines? 

Through ages long the stubborn strife had failed 

Against Rome's minions in their priestcraft mailed ; 

In vain, in vain had king and kaiser tried 

To break or bend the more than human pride 



9 

Of him who seated in Saint Peter's chair 

Was venerated as St. Peter's heir. 

Capetian wily and Franconian prond 

And lordly HohenstaufFen, each had bowed, 

In might's despite, as lowly as the crowd, 

Before a man of worldly might forlorn, 

Simple and poor, of no extraction born, 

But who could yet outface the highest scorn, 

Rebuke a monarch as a peasant greet, 

Frown down a prince or wash a beggar's feet. 

Canossa witness and the deathless fame 

Of that Fourth Heinrich's penitence and shame. 

Yet what had humbled Heinrich done but treat 

His people's rights as dust beneath his feet? 

Had seized the Church's abbeys and the poor's 

domain 
To feed the waste of vice and riot vain, 
The Saxon land with bandit ruffians filled, 
Its maids dishonoured and its manhood killed, 
Had drenched with guilt the annals of his time 7 
Till malice self could feign no missing crime. 
An ancient Csesar could the like have done 
Nor found among a hundred flamens one 
To blame the deed, the criminal to shun. 
The faith of Christ was deep in Europe then : 
What could a Kaiser mid believing men ? 
Here brutish nobles, there a spearman mob 
Might champion any chief who let them rob, 
And for a year, ten years, a single shore 
Rapine might WTeak what pity must deplore. 



10 

But at the root of ev'ry such success 

There lay the Credo which soon made it less. 

So long as men believed that God was Truth, 

That Christ was God the Son, and that, in sooth, 

The Faith He gave was needful to the earth, — 

Else how explain His death, and life and birth ? — 

It scarce could scape the most unthinking clod 

That who denied the Church denied his God. 

Howe'er politic moods might chop and change, 

And howe'er earthly passions roam and range, 

That God's own faith, for which the Man- God died, 

Could err, seemed fiction which itself belied. 

And men still left it to a later time 

To fashion forth the principle sublime : 

" Where Godhead's self divinest truth doth say 

u And proves it in the most tremendous way, 

" It were quite strange if it went not astray." 

While Europe kept so obstinately dark 

The stoutest could no more than strike a spark, 

Which here or there might kindle into blaze 

But no extended conflagration raise. 

The Church but thundered and her faithful folk 

Just stopped their ears when innovation spoke. 

They could not hear much good they were agreed, 

And sinful word made seldom holy deed. 

Nor was it safe to gibbet, hack, and draw, 

As Knox-and-Cranmer's happy Britain saw, 

By way of pious zeal and godly law. 

In Albi and some other haunts beside 

These cherished methods of Freethought were tried, 



11 

And cities sacked and butchered monks and nuns, 
Gave worthy sign of Reformation's sons. 
But then the custom had this one defect, 
It roused all Christendom against the sect, 
The Moor and Arab not unused to smite, 
The Christian peoples mustered thick to fight ; 
And though our Press can never deem it right 
That self-defence should arm a Christian knight^ 
Yet such are facts, those Romish laymen hot 
Were apt to give the measure that they got. 
Still not ; withal, so scant of solid gains, 
Those baffled tugs to snap the new forged chains. 
Ere men were Christians they had first been men? 
And monkeys too, says Darwin, before then ; 
The Tartar breaks out if the Russ you scrape, 
And deep in man there lies the Primal Ape. 
Though Popes and priests their canticles might 

sing, 
And deem their Faith had curbed both crowd and 

king, 
To put their exultation out of tune 
There lingered still the Natural Baboon; 
The danger was, lest even innate sense 
For want of use should lose its best defence., 
Until at last each instinct slipped away 
Which linked mankind to brutes of lust and prey. 
This risk to weaken and this peril stay, 
No step was loss that checked the Church a day. 
And not alone were precious triumphs scored 
By Swabian sceptre, Albigensian sword. 



12 

Although in ev'ry age, and race, and land, 

Save Force alone there is no other stand 

Which can the Church's overthrow command, 

As witness loud the Neo- Pagan band, 

From Falck's and Bismarck's scientific boors 

To Carterets and Challemel Lacours ; 

So long as gibbet, block, and guillotine, 

Cannot be safely brought upon the scene, 

Each breach, each schism, each heresy, each strife, 

Whatever tends to make division rife, 

And cut or split the Christian brotherhood, 

Is wise, and useful, provident and good : 

What rends the brethren, stabs the Church again 

And opens paths anew to Caesar's reign. 

Thou, Luther, wast at length the promised man 

That deftest sapped the Dead Redeemer's plan, 

The seamless garment into parcels tore, 

Recalled the Neros to the Christian shore, 

Cast down the Cross, set high the Axe and Rods, 

And bowed the earth to geographic gods. 

Heresiarchs that ere thine advent came, 

From Wycliffe of equivocating fame, 

To Photius, Arius, and each other name, 

That blisters on the Church's roll of shame, 

Within their seat and range had laurels won, 

High service to the Church's foes had done, 

The One Fold scattered, never quite in vain, 

And where they broke not, always left a stain. 

But thou, Great Chief, how hymn thy various might 

Save Cassell publish or D'Aubigne write ? 



13 

So prompt to lie, to pour the brazen tale, 

With cheek unblushing, eye that could not quail, 

And tongue as glib with foulest filth to rail.* 

How should the monkish scapulars find way 

That steaming flood of ribaldry to stay ? 

Thy legacies of discord still prevail. 

Most potent pest of Christendom, all hail ! 

The leader, land, and time did nicely fit, 

As never yet by annalist was writ. 

What kingdoms might the Royal Christ have gained 

Had Reformation but one age refrained ! 

Just as the Moor had from Granada reeled, 

Just as Colomb new continents revealed, 

Just as young culture into blossom broke, 

To wake the furies was a master-stroke. 

Through centuries had Europe sought to rise 

To that fair hope which then made glad all eyes; 

The Frank and Avar, Wend and Longobard, 

The cruel Goth, Burgundian stern and hard, 

And Anglo-Saxon, warlike Aleman, 

And Gaels where Caesar's edicts never ran, 

Sarmatians, each barbaric race beside 

That swept the nations like an angry tide, 

What time the gory eagle stooped and died — 

* " "We have writings of his contemporaries, we have writ- 
" ings of grave men in ages less polished than his own. No 
" serious author of the least reputation will be found who 
" denies his pages, I do not say with such indelicacy, but with 
" such disgusting Jilthiness, as Luther." — Hallam, Literary 
History, Part I, Chapter IV. 



14 

The Church had found them in their nomad tent, 
On fray and foray, wrath and rapine bent, 
Had mercy taught them and had guidance lent, 
By gentler manners led to gentler arts, 
And lifted thoughts by purifying hearts. 
As ever Faith's dominion onward bore 
Each generation marked a progress more. 
To lord and vassal, lord and slave gave place, 
And freedom waxed as labour grew less base. 
A tribe of monks, the Benedictine brood, 
Plied spade and mattock in the cord and hood, 
Drained the morass, heaved down the savage 

wood, 
And proved by practice that to work was good. * 
The Church's ban o'erawed the tyrant's frown, 
The solemn minster marked the busy town, 

* '* The monks of Saint Benedict," wrote Michelet, " first 
" gave the ancient world the example of labour by the 
" hands of freemen." " The monks of Saint Benedict," wrote 
Guizot, " were the clearers of the forests of Europe." " An 
" Abbey," wrote Augustin Thierry, " was not only a place of 
" prayer and meditation but an asylum against the invasion of 
" barbarism of every kind. That refuge of books and learning 
" was the shelter of workshops of every kind ; its dependencies 
" formed what we should call to-day a model farm." " The 
" monks," wrote Hurter, " cleared with their own hands the 
" forests, and raised the peaceful abodes of man in the wilds 
" where lately roamed the wolf and boar." " Many donations 
" made to the monasteries," wrote Hallam, " donations which 
" appear to us enormous, consisted of lands completely devas- 
" tated, which otherwise would have remained uncultivated." 



15 

The abbey rose beside the donjon keep, 

And peaceful burghers learned in peace to sleep, 

And where he sowed there might the tenant reap. 

From north and east and south new spoilers poured, 

Viking and Hun and Saracenic horde ; 

The Moslem's steeds had charged on Poitou's plain, 

The Northman's keels had ploughed the Midland 

Main, 
The Alps had seen the passage of fresh hosts, 
Whose mien and deeds revived Attila's boasts. 
From Trebizond to Iar Connaught's strand, 
From Praga to the Septimanian land, 
By sea and stream, by hill and vale and dell, 
Panic and pallor on the peoples fell, 
The Orient vast had yielded to the strife, 
The Photian cancer ate Byzantium's life. 
Though courage fled and hope was well nigh 

gone, 
The Builders of New Europe builded on ; 
Kesolved and high the Christian Pontiffs spoke, 
And from its stupor Christendom awoke ; 
Seized lance and shield, advanced the Cross's 

sign, 
And pierced the peril in far Palestine. 
And now the toil of anxious ages past 
And Europe free to Europe's sons at last, 
"What might so fair horizons still o'ercast, 
What plague ascend such promise rich to blast ? 
Come stand beside the yellow Tiber's foam, 
Within the Sistine Chapel of New Rome, 



16 

At golden dawning of that Leo's Age, 

Whose noon of years shall weep the lurid page 

Writ large with civil hate and bigot rage. 

And in this hall of worship, priestly song, 

Made to their God by Romish pope-led throng, 

What forms, what glories, on the vot'ries shine ! 

What lofty grace, what majesty divine ! 

Say then, this laggard Church, hath it been slow, 

To prize the* skill of Michael Angelo ? 

Revolve the record of man's intellect 

And find one gift that waited for the Sect. 

Shakespeare was Catholic in heart and brain, 

In thought and feeling, in each nerve and vein. 

Did Dante's genius sleep until the shock 

Of jarring creeds encompassed Peter's Rock? 

Those famous Schools survey through Europe wide, 

From Albion's vales where Cam and Isis glide, 

To where, by winding Seine and Donau's tide, 

Sate Learning throned amid the public pride, — 

And name but one, from Scythia to the West, 

By priests unplanted or by priests unblest. 

Oxford, Bologna, Paris, and Salern, 

Cambridge and Alcala, where'er you turn, 

Praga and Wien, Ingoldstadt, Louvain, 

Leipzig and Basle; from Germany to Spain, 

From Thurso to Tarent, and back again; 

Still here some Pope hath raised a college, there 

Some council set a Greek or Hebrew Chair. 

Those times, indeed, knew not the doctrines bright 

So favoured by our century of light, 



• 17 

That whoso nothing holds can soundest preach, 
And need of teaching proves a gift to teach. 
Philosophy had not divorced belief, 
Nor kneeled to matter as its primal chief. 
Copernicus could trace the starry maze 
Nor lose his God however far he gaze. 
How strange the care of that rejected Church, 
That dotard left by progress in the lurch, 
Should still provide endowment for research ! 
Or view another scene: — the bustling port, 
The fleets, the canvass spread the breeze to court, 
The shouting crews, the flags and pennons gay, 
The parting vows — De Gama sails to-day ; 
Or Colombo it may be, Amerigo, 
Or Cabral, Albuquerque, Jean Cabot. 
New continents ! new isles ! new lands ! new seas ! 
The deep hath had its marvels. Drifted trees, 
A bark canoe impelled as currents please, 
The secret whispered. Sign with sign agrees, 
And hero hearts the fair occasion seize. 
Prelate and priest have blest them from the shore, 
And faith shines bright though danger looms before. 
Those valiant Vikings of the Christian times. 
Those dauntless seekers of untrodden climes, 
Nor shame nor degradation felt to pay 
The Cross its honour, Pater Nosters say, 
And mid the tempest's fiercest storm and spray, 
Breathe Stella maris. Plena gratice. 
When statesman and grandee had shrunk aghast, 
Or shrugged the shoulder at his purpose vast, 

c 



18 

Who bade the lonely seaman have good cheer, 

And won the Genoese the royal ear? 

Again a monk, his order's corded slave, 

Hath ventured fears and prejudice to brave. 

And Prior Perez, honour to his name, 

Secures America and Coiomb's fame. 

Yet well might Prior Perez aid a scheme 

That laymen named a visionary's dream. 

A priest should not neglect a pontiff's word, 

And sixty years had passed not since men heard 

What that Fifth Martin on St. Peter's chair 

Had set the fisher's signet to declare. 

" To all, who not for lucre vile and dull 

" But for the Christ," so ran the Papal Bull, 

u Discover shores unknown, Indulgence Full, 

" As if their feet had trod the sacred spot 

" Where kings and shepherds worshipped at the 

cot. 
" To Henry, Lusitania's sailor prince, 
u Whose noble quests such charity evince, 
" Aye searching out to swell the Church's fold, 
" Each long-lost race by Satan still enroll'd, 
u Dominion wide be granted, blessing shown, 
a With greeting from our Apostolic Throne." 
In such wise fashion used to act those Popes 
Adroitly mingling earth's and heaven's hopes, 
Combining bribes with philanthropic sighs 
That are but admonitions in disguise. 
Since Europe has to higher levels come, 
To civilize means syphilis and rum ; 



19 

And as the new apostles multiply, 

It only follows that the natives die. 

Fair was the vision Christendom displayed, 

And bright the promise that the future made. 

The faith had waxed so fast, and waxed so 

strong, 
The earth must have been Catholic ere long. 
From pole to pole from farthest zone to zone 
The round globe showed the sullen Turk alone, 
Whose hate new-whetted by Byzantium's fall, 
A Christian nation ventured to enthrall. 
But what were legions of the Ottoman, 
His bashaws and his janissary van, 
To cope against the federated might 
Of King and Kaiser, cavalier and knight ? 
By high Belgrade and Varna's bloody strand, 
The sword that glittered in Hunyady's hand 
Spread flight and terror through the Paynim land. 
From Rhodes or Malta, Europe's rampart posts, 
The great Grand Masters kept the Christian coasts, 
And soldier-monks upon a bastioned rock 
At mighty soldans could afford to mock. 
Granada's conquest the last menace broke, 
And now it wanted but a single stroke 
To end for ever the false Prophet's yoke. 
That citadel of darkness swept away 
How might a Xaviers ecstasy portray 
The full effulgence of the Christian day ! 
Not tens of thousands on the Indian shore, 
Not millions only should the Christ adore. 

c 2 • 



20 

China should yield its teeming multitude, 

Attila's steppes their hordes of Tatars rude; 

In climes beyond the realms of Prester John, 

Where never feet of voyager had gone, 

In farthest vales of Polynesian seas, 

In deserts withered by the simoom breeze, 

Where sleeping oceans rock on isles of spice, 

Where frozen torrents cling to banks of ice, 

By every tongue and people far and wide, 

By every tribe on ev'ry streamlet's side 

Should love and worship pay the Christ Who died, 

And God be honoured in His Crucified. 

Not Arctic frosts, nor Afric's scorching sands, 

Should check the Church's missionary bands, 

Again new Patricks should be sent from Rome 

And Boniface forsake his British home. 

Again as in the Frank and Gothic days 

The civil arts should deck the Church's ways, 

Culture and laws attend the priestly train 

And Asian Charlemagnes at Delhi reign. — 

Begone ye fancies fit for monkish haunt, 

Religion, peace and unity avaunt. 

Avaunt ye dreams of human brotherhood 

Fond yearnings for the Beautiful and Good, 

Ere now the potion hath been mixed and brewed 

Will set the nations in another mood. 

Like Circe's son, great Luther gives to driuk, 

And, prone transformed, the swilling peoples sink. 

Exalt, fair Ignorance, thy brutish face, 

And, motley Superstition, air thy grace, 



21 

Down with the Church ! Lean on the Lord 

alone ! 
And each man pick a Lord God of his own ! 
Socinian, Anabaptist, Calvinist, 
Moravian, Solifidian, Synergist, 
Armenian, Round-head, Quaker, Methodist, 
Supralapsarian, Adiaphorist. 
Freelover, Swedenborgian, Hattemist, 
Erastian, Antinomian, Atheist, 
Whatever folly any fool may list, 
Whatever crime hypocrisy can gloze, 
Whatever baseness despots can impose. 
And hark the brawling of the prophet throng, 
The tu quoque, the lie direct and strong, 
The roar of objurgation foul and long. 
u Thou pig," quoth Luther, "doomed in hell to 

burn." 
u Thou beast/' Oecolampadius doth return. 
Thick and more thick across the German sky 
The bandied curses aud revilings fly. 
Here Luther bellows universal hate 
And pelts his rivals with rich billingsgate : 
Calvin's evangel is a devil's creed, 
Zwingle shall reap damnation's direst meed, 
The stinking Stankfeld stinks in name and deed; 
And ev'ry other is a filthy hog, 
A brainless ass, a brute, a mangy dog, 
A sot, a fool, a knave, a senseless log, 
A sneak, a scoundrel, a devouring wolf, 
A skulking vermin, imp from brimstone gulf; 



22 

With torrents of putrescent matter more, 

Which whoso likes may with stopped nose explore. 

Nor while in master hues the master paints 

Are there no sketches by opposing saints. 

Ambitious, insolent, and double-tongued, 

A rudass, reckless, coarse and leather-lunged, 

Where peasants trouble, prompt to domineer ; 

A sycophant when lords and landgraves near : 

Rejecting scripture, changing creeds at will, 

But in each change just as dogmatic still ; 

Inflaming men to cast down Peter's dome, 

But proud himself with thrice the pride of Rome ; 

Such Luther was, his co-apostles say^ 

And yet was Luther full as pure as they. 

Judicious Hallam almost sighs to view 

The Church of God reformed by such a crew. 

But then could such a mongrel pack succeed 

In howling down the nations' Christian creed ? 

Could quibbling knaves, who as themselves declare 

Did little else but lie, blaspheme, and swear, 

Contrive the faith of ages to impair ? 

Had Christendom for centuries believed 

To be so lightly in one hour deceived ? 

Are oaks like saplings by a gust o'erthrown ? 

Are boulders shaken like a pebble stone ? 

Are Andes riven like an anthill's cone ? 

Nay, but the storm the forest hath withstood, 

May it not thin the newly planted wood ? 

The surge that breaks upon the rooted rock, 

Will surface clays resist its foaming shock ? 



23 

The stroke that splinters on the mountain side 

May shifting sandheaps its sharp dint abide ? 

The Church still lives, it must, alas, be told, 

And rears its front imperial as of old; 

To North and South its teachers 7 feet still run, 

And meet the Rising, chase the Setting Sun. 

The Church still stood, let Luther do his worst ; 

The Church still stands as constant as at first. 

So far, nor time nor Reformations change, 

Nor stoops the oak, nor sinks the mountain range. 

Yes, but that new birth of the human mind, 

That burst of bigot rage and fury blind, 

Those jangling pulpits at each corner set, 

That war of words which hath no ending yet, 

Those monstrous dogmas bred of bad extremes, 

Those fatalist and antinomian schemes, 

Those altars where the Saviour's shrine was placed 

Cast on the earth, demolished or defaced, 

Those churches where the praise of God had rung 

"With offal littered and with stable-dung, 

Those scaffolds soaked with gore of mangled priests, 

Those Titus Oateses and their fellow-beasts, 

Those gospel treaties as at Limerick Stone 

Those crowning mercies as at "Wexford shown, 

John Knox insulting hapless Mary's lot, 

And Beza blessing Poltrot's felon shot : — 

Assuredly such monumental facts, 

Such speaking witness of reforming acts, 

Exhibit clear the manifold effects, 

Of that uprising of subversive sects, 



24 

The marvel still, must in that case remain, 
How came revolt to break tradition's chain, 
How came the sects to ope their upstart reign? 
No marvel, though, if but with facts we count, 
To trace a turbid torrent to its fount. 
Not universally did discord bloom, 
By stages spread the puritanic gloom, 
Invet'rate health prolonged a stout defence, 
By small beginnings rotted common sense. 
If Tyndal now can chant how matter rose, 
Magnific from its dignified repose, 
If Huxley, by a due procession then, 
Sets forth how muck bred maggots, maggots men. 
It was not always so. By slow degrees 
Could Christendom attain to heights like these* 
How fierce the toil, how desperate the chance, 
Who shall to-day with worthiness advance? 
Rich in the licence heresy hath left, 
Bereft of truth, of principle bereft, 
Without one hope that is not overthrown, 
Without one aim save chaffering alone, 
Without a God whom man can love or fear, 
Without men fit a true God to revere, 
This Nineteenth Age but little dreams what art, 
What luck combined to give Reform its start. 
Had but its scene been changed from Europe's 

edge, 
Its rawest races and its outmost ledge ; 
From Scot and Saxon coarse, Borussian wild, 
And Scandinavian, culture's youngest child, 



25 

From spendthrift peers agape for abbey lands, 

From Commons crouched to lechery's commands, 

Whoe'er of Eeformation might have heard, 

What charm had lain in Luther's foulest word? 

No Calvin e'er had made Serve tus roast, 

No Cranmer been the Anglic Church's boast. 

Blest Ignorance, with avarice allied 

And Tudor's gory lust and brutal pride, 

Thine was the magic, thine the meed should be, 

From George's Channel to the Baltic Sea ! 

Well did such help the Church despoilers grace, 

And well reaction chose a rally place. 

Like backwoods where the settler's axe still rings, 

Like camps and diggings such as Bret Harte sings, 

In Oregon, by Colorado's wave, 

The last retreat of hunted Indian brave, 

Or where Natal the Britons colonise, 

In zealous modes the Briton always tries ; 

Such by the side of Europe's cultured seats 

Those regions were that welcomed Luther's feats. 

To civil life unbroke, untaught and rude, 

The border tract with border vice imbued, 

The half barbaric fringe of Christendom, 

Where learning slept and polish had not come. 

And far beneath the backwoods of our day. 

Were those wild shores that by the Baltic lay. 

The rugged pioneers whose axe and spade 

Our earth's remaining solitudes invade, 

Are often reckless, oftentimes debased, 

Yet carry with them traces unefFaced, 



26 

And stretched beside some lonely torrent's foam, 
Or while their steeds the wide savannahs roam, 
Can nurse ideals of a distant home. 
But what could Brandenburger boor recall 
Beyond that sordid life which was his all? 
What dreamed Borussia, half unchristened still, 
Of French refinement or Italian skill? 
What Dante made divine the Runic harsh? 
Who heard of Bayards in the Holstein marsh? 
Unlettered, dull, and gross of thought and speech, 
As latest come within the Church's reach, 
The future Protestants could hardly claim 
A portion in the European name. 
The line of culture marked the line of creed ; 
The backward North took in reaction's seed, 
But nobler soils choked off the noxious weed. 
Britannia's fall demands an altered tale. 
There, there indeed, used ancient faith prevail, 
Our Lady's Dowry in the days of old, 
And saints and sages writ the name in gold. 
From Rome, for ever Rome, was drawn the line, 
From dauntless Watson back to Augustine. 
Nor while the stalwarth Saxons held their own 
Were pious monarchs wanting to the throne. 
With Alfreds, Edmunds, Edwards at the helm, 
The Church could flourish in a loyal realm. 
With foreign tyrants, men of wilful mood, 
Who seldom brooked whate'er their will withstood, 
A taint into the nation's councils crept, 
And deeds began which fair religion wept. 



27 

For never yet, since first the faith arose, 
Had faith and freedom any sep'rate foes, 
Who freedom trample, must the Church oppose, 
Who conscience bruise a Caesar's aim disclose. 
The Red King, who was outraged England's 

curse, 
Was ready to be Mussulman or worse. 
The lawless House that made a Becket bleed 
Provoked the wrath that spake at Runnymede. 
And as the centuries held on their course 
Corruption gained new elements of force. 
Balked of his whim to tyrannize alone, 
The monarch sought by evil licence shown 
To bind exacting nobles to his throne. 
When King and Peers hostilities maintain, 
The People only are most apt to gain, 
As King and Peers aside their quarrels lay, 
Both Church and State become their felon prey. 
A while the fields of desolated France 
Gave spoil enough to each freebooting lance. 
When rapine's wave receded from Orleans, 
And Prince and Baron tied to English scenes, 
Like sullen wolves debarred their wonted prowl, 
Glared fiercely round for rapine still more foul ; 
Then, then, o'erflowed the hapless nation's grief, 
And civil slaughters foreran unbelief. 
There is no school like savage war's alarms 
To teach disdain for meek religion's charms, 
No sermons can humanity unpreach 
Like city sacked and corpse-encumbered breach, 



28 

No devil's psalmody like trumpet notes, 

No hell's rehearsal equals cutting throats. 

Whoever won by holt or heath or green 

And whether White or Crimson Rose was queen, 

Those tossing bannerols that stoop and rise, 

Those furious warshouts that affront the skies, 

Those emptied seats where charging squadrons 

crash, 
Those dropping files where steel and volley flash. 
Those horrid mounds that hide the kindred dead, 
The confiscations and the vengeance dread, 
Were tokens sure that Christ had lost the day 
And sin and crime usurped His Gospel's sway. 
The ruling caste who could their country rend, 
Till weariness to murder set an end, 
But left unslaked their avaricious greed, 
Could hardly seem unripe for any deed 
Which promised store of plunder as its meed. 
They place Reform by half an age too late, 
Who only from licentious Tudor date. 
A prior horror must the last explain, 
And that arose upon Saint Alban's plain. 
Brutality throughout the land supreme, 
And pillage grown to be a household theme, 
Defenceless monks in abbeys rich and fair, 
Caring the people and the people's care, 
A bandit peerage on the watch to spring, 
What more was wanted but a ruffian King? 
And yet in spite of banded prince and peer, 
Dungeon and fine and loss of worldly gear, 



29 

And cruel rack and shameful gibbet near, 

All dastard enginr'y of bigot fear, 

All damning lies-to Reformation dear, 

It took a doubtful strife, a stubborn wrench, 

To make that faithful English people blench. 

Away with Christendom ! the word was spoke, 

And Hesse's rabble in applauses broke. 

Away with churches ! Down with all good works ! 

While there are abbots, wherefore trouble Turks? 

To check the Moslem doth the Pope invite; 

Why should Reformers with the Moslem fight? 

Why run the perils of a new crusade 

When there are convents still to escalade ? 

Let Moor and Janissary slay at will, 

Since after all they only Christians kill. 

And who can say that Luther was so wrong, 

For giving thanks the Ottomans were strong? 

Both Luther and the Turk were quite agreed 

On all the leading features of their creed. 

Both held that though the Christ might be admired 

A further Prophet plainly was required. 

And though they differed on the Prophet's name, 

Still at the base their notions were the same. 

Both, too, condemned in clearest words that be 

The Romish error that the will was free. 

The Turkish Kismet stood for Will Servile, 

But this was merely philologic style. 

"God," cried the pair, "makes good and bad be 

done," 
So straightway Luther violates a nun. 



30 

And his disciples, worthy of their chief, 

Took care their acts should bear out their belief. 

Sin stoutly, was advice not said in vain. 

Sin stoutly, no more purgatorial pain ! 

Sin stoutly, gorge and swill and lust amain !* 

Allah il Allah ! Faith makes all secure, 

To True Believers ev'ry crime is pure. 

Or if it be not so, at any rate, 

Whatever is, is pre-ordained by Fate, 

Denying God was moral, it were odd 

Had Luther been much better than his God. 

To bring about plurality of wives, 

The Saxon, like the Arab Prophet strives. 

Both setting forth the easy days of old, 

When concubines the Israelites consoled. 

What Patriarchs and Solomons could do, 

Might well be done by Hessian Landgraves too. 

Should sere Christina be the only dear, 

While Marguerite invited smiling near? 

What though the former was the lawful wife, 

Shall Popish trammels clog Reforming life? 

A single doubt vexed Luther's godly mind 

Which plainly showed his nature large and kind : 

* The following quotation is given, among many others, by 
Hallam (Literary History, Part 1, Chapter IV.), and may 
serve to illustrate the more than Mahommedan freedom granted 
by Luther to his sectaries : " Ita vides quam dives sit homo 
" Christianus et baptisatus qui etiam volens not potest perdere 
" salutem suam quantiscunque peccatis, nisi nolit credere. 
" Nulla enim peccata eum possunt damnare, nisi sola incre- 
" dulitas." 



31 

So long as Marguerite had blooming charms, 

Would Philip take Christina to his arms? 

But Philip vowed, if he the twain might wed, 

That each in turn should share his double bed. 

What further could the Great Reformer ask, 

Except a while the dirty job to mask ? 

Some people still the Christian Law preferred, 

Nor was polygamy the nicest word. 

But when did secret sinning lose its zest? 

By Luther, Bucer, and Melancthon blest, 

The Landgrave clasped his Gretchen to his breast, 

And then, next day, his tried Christina pressed. 

When Luther sware indulgences to hew, 

He had a patent of his own in view.* 

A hall ! A hall ! while Calvin institutes 

The Devil-Christ of Knox and Gomar brutes, 

Calvin, of Reformation's brood most fell, 

Whose clangours strident from the lower hell, 

Are Christian Love's and Christian Mercy's knell. 

Glory to God ! the fierce blasphemer cries, 

Who sweetest incense draws from human sighs, 

And on assured damnations feasts His eyes. 

In vain may man resist the fixed decree, 

In his re sis tings still is he not free. 

* The infamous license for bigamy granted by a council of 
the leading Beformers to their great patron, the Landgrave 
Philip of Hesse, has been commented upon in suitable terms 
by many Protestant writers, among the rest by the late Sir 
"William Hamilton, the distinguished Scotch metaphysician, in 
his Philosophical Discussions. 



32 

The justest saint that lived without a stain, 

If Reprobate, descends to endless pain. 

The vilest wretch that wronged his brothers here, 

Elect, inherits the seraphic sphere. 

This was the meaning of the Saviour's birth, 

To make his Father horrible to earth; 

To teach this infamy the sweet Christ died, 

For this the lance had pierced the gentle side :— 

Go view, to study how such dogmas work, 

The Holy Willies of the Scottish Kirk. 

And where is he, within whose breast a spark 

Of native worth outshines misguidings dark, 

That, could he such a Deity admit, 

Would still delay His monstrous shrine to quit. 

Who that, ere he should stoop to such a sway, 

Would not — let worst befall — indignant say ; — 

" puissant God, if Thou be Calvin's God, 

" Sooner than bend before Thy demon rod, 

" Sooner than pay to Thee one inch, one jot, 

" Of worship base, Thy direst be my lot. 

" Defenceless here I stand, foredoomed, forlorn, 

44 Yet, Maker dread, take back Thy creature's 

scorn, 
" Immortal, mortal I defy Thee now, 
" Nay smite, to Thee this knee shall never bow." 
But what do they of God or Mankind reck. 
That haste to spring at Eeformation's beck? 
Europe hath swept and garnished been too long, 
The banished spirits set their leaguer strong, 
And rage to build the final reign of wrong. 



33 

Blind Pride, and Avarice, and evil Hate, 

And brutish Lust, foul Ignorance's mate, 

Wild-eyed Unrest, that tears his shaggy hair, 

And Gluttony that wallows in his lair. 

And with these chiefs their ministering train, 

Heaven's abhorrence and the People's bane. 

Strifes, Feuds, and Curses, Angers and Bloodguilt, 

And Vengeance fattened where'er blood is spilt, 

Arson and Rapine, mad Fanaticism, 

And Simonies, the spawn of Despotism, 

Proscriptions that some oligarchs enrich, 

And Poverty that festers in its ditch. 

The Open Bible ! Hark the parrot cry. 

The Open Bible ! What more cynic lie? 

Where not one in the hundred read a word, 

Conceive a fraud more brazenly absurd. 

The Open Bible ! Truth's appointed rule. 

The Open Bible ! Butt of ev'ry fool, 

Where each fresh prophet finds a gospel new, 

Where each last critic takes a later view. 

But why good sense or honesty observe? 

When wills are ready any cry will nerve ; 

Most crook' d is straight, and straightest makes a 

curve. 
Should Reformation Deformation be ? 
But what if men prefer Deformity. 
In thievish Latin call they thieving theft ? 
Not so, but simply finding what is left. 
Does Bismarck persecute the Church he hates ? 
Again not so, he merely legislates. 



34 

When priests half hanged were stript on Tyburn 

lawn, 
To have their bellies ript and bowels drawn, 
What Protestant that saw the victims sink; 
But swore how men at length were free to think ? 
But Open Bible, let the watchword be, 
It might as well have been Fraternity, 
Freethought, or any other fad we see. 
The great thing was that some false monk or priest 
Should play sham pope, sham bishop at the least, 
- — How strange whenever laymen want a new belief 
Some cashiered monk is almost always chief — 
That sacrilege should be no more a sin, 
And Kings, their harlots, and their harlots' kin, 
With comrade peers, should in the scramble win 
All lands and goods the ancient church might hold, 
Abbey and hospice, farm and wood and wold, 
Monstrance and chalice, paten and pyx of gold, 
And vestments rare and shrines of worthies old ; 
But, each thing else above, that every State, 
Or kingdom or republic small or great, 
Should have its own God cut quite separate, 
And by its own designer's fashion plate. 
For fifteen centuries the Christian Church 
Had taught : There is One God ; no other search 
Nor serve but Him ; and since He is but One, 
The Father, Holy Ghost, and Saviour Son, 
But one His Faith, but one His Worship's aim, 
But one His Church's universal frame, 
Through all lands stretching and in all the same. 



35 

When fifteen centuries of truth were past, 
Was it not time to progress back at last? 
The object should be mirrored in the means, 
The prelude shadow forth the closing scenes. 
When Christ was sent to purify the world, 
Was people against people blindly hurled? 
Did Peter summon up the servile herd 
By savage rage to spread the Gospel word ? 
Did Paul, to prove his doctrine by its fruits, 
Grant Nero license for his prostitutes? 
Of course with quite another end in view* 
Reform must use quite other measures too. 
But constant still religion to defame, 
Each crime is wrought in fair religion's name. 
Munzer and Knipperdolling lead their bands 
Of frenzied serfs, the dregs of twenty lands, 
To do — what else ? — the Christian God's com- 
mands ! 
From Switzer hills to dull Batavian coasts 
Slaughter and flame attend the rabid hosts. 
Castle and cloister, keep and abbey spire, 
Cottage and court were given to the fire. 
The knight was hanged before his manor door, 
The priest was piked upon his chapel floor. 

* " Munzer and Knipperdolling, with the whole rabble of 
" Anabaptist fanatics, were the legitimate brood of Luther's 
" early doctrine. And e^en if we set these aside, it is certain 
" that we find no testimonies to any reform of manners in the 
'* countries which embraced it." — Hallam's Literary History, 
Part I. Chap. IV. 

D 2 



36 

The Bible showed how righteous Joshua's sword 

Was blest to smite the Canaanitish horde ; 

To raze their idol temples to the ground, 

And slay and slay while godless foe was found. 

And what so sure as Holy Scripture's light 

To lead the blindest of mankind aright? 

Luther had said it, and the wretches take 

Their fill of murder for the Gospel's sake ! — 

And fill of fiendish lust beside : What then ? 

Sin brands no blemish on believing men. 

There was, however, this distinction yet, 

Which taught and teacher in contention set : 

Luther would only rob the priest and poor, 

But not yield up the noble to the boor. 

Had but the Anabaptist hinds agreed 

To sack and level cell and shrine, indeed, 

But never hurt the nice gentility 

Of prince and lord of high and low degree ; — 

To strip the seats of charitable trust 

And lay the gates of mercy in the dust, 

But never hurt one frowning keep or hall, 

Where brigand barons held the land in thrall ; — 

Then, then, of course their cause had Luther 

blest, 
And damned their victims with his deepest zest. 
But, as it was, and since the peasant rout 
Just slew a noble with as little doubt 
As some old monk's or abbot's brains dash out; 
And as, when chance of gold or loot they saw, 
They seldom stayed divisions fine to draw, 



37 

Would swill a margrave's like a bishop's wine, 

And in a court as in a convent dine ; 

Would snatch ancestral plate and ladies' rings, 

As if they were no more than holy things, 

And even palaces despoil and smirch 

As readily as Luther might a church ; 

It followed that he felt his liver fill, 

Until he could no more his anger still, 

But bade the German princes go and kill. 

The servile war in servile blood lay crushed. 

And orgies ended at which Europe blushed, 

Yet Private Judgment's saints will not withhold 

The tribute of a tear to John Becold. 

Foul orgies ended ! Savage war repressed ! 

Nay, orgies new, and warfare without rest. 

Just as in days which mystics love to paint, 

Each convert kingdom had its female saint, 

Like sweet Olotilde who tamed her monarch's 

mood, 
Till Go vis bowed to Remy's holy rood, 
So now to aid the cause which Luther bore, 
Each pervert region had its special whore : — 
The Hessian Marguerite for German lands, 
By Luther linked in bigamy's lewd bands ; 
For Britain, poor Boleyn, her pomp how fleet ! 
Frail harlot bridal ! Gory winding sheet ! 
And Scandinavia's faith will learn to blench 
At coarse Duveke, the Danish tyrant's wench. 
Adulteries with murders were so mixed, 
That save corruption there was nothing fixed ; 



38 

Each count or churl who knew his brutal mind 
To such a gospel graciously inclined, 
Must needs exhibit in his place and sphere 
The lessons that the royal knaves made clear. 
While such the license in the layman throng, 
The preachers pass Destruction's torch along, 
And ever more the baneful flame waxed strong. 
From hand to hand and shore to shore it blazed, 
Till Horror's self, affrighted and amazed, 
Had fled aghast the horror that it raised. 
When vengeful Goths in furious triumph trod 
Through captive Rome, they spared the domes of 

God. 
The Hunnish chief, whose formidable boast 
Proclaimed that in the hoof-prints of his host 
The earth renewed no more its carpet green, 
Was awed by Leo's venerable mien, 
Half felt a touch of goodness move his soul, 
And owned the spell of sanctity's control. 
The new Barbarians no such weakness show, 
The new Barbarians no such feeling know. 
Why should they stop at what the Goth had done, 
Whose glory shall be to out- Hun the Hun? 
But wherefore now repeat the oft-told tale ? 
Through half of Europe rang the Christian wail, 
As when the Northman's war-cries swelled the 

gale. 
The age of fire and sword had come once more, 
And crime and sacrilege and ruin sore; 
With this to worsen what had been before— 



39 

That Europe now was in its ripening bloom, 

Its spring of hope, its sunshine without gloom, 

When dastard heresy spoke culture's doom. 

Go, meditate the fall of fair Melrose, 

That felony of Scotia's direst foes, 

And yet no felony that cannot find 

A myriad repetitions of its kind. 

The hands that maimed Melrose's symmetry, 

And cast its wreck of beauty on the lea, 

Were just as busy in a hundred shires, 

And by ten thousand abbeys' gothic spires. 

From ravaged plains of martyred Innisfail, 

To where the Finmark fisher spreads his sail, 

Ask of those shattered piles which crown each 

mound, 
And cumber ev'ry fairest reach of ground, 
What devastation left such shameful trace, 
What Vandal tribe, what desolating race 
Hath branded this indelible disgrace ? 
Nay, let us not so harshly criticize, 
But learn to look with Reformation's eyes. 
They were but monks, the common people's 

kin, 
Whom those dismantled cloisters once closed in ; 
With some of course of more exalted birth, 
But mostly kneaded out of vulgar earth. 
With lowly piety, with lowly toil, 
Had they raised up these riches from the soil, 
Nor had they used their stores for private ends,— 
The Celibate must make mankind his friends, 



40 

At least must love his convent's neighbourhood — 

And these were stewards of their Maker's good, 

Their wealth a trust for where their convent stood. 

Early and late their gate was opened wide 

For every sick or weary one that came their side. 

Broad were their lands, but what to them was pelf 

Whose rule forbade both family and self? 

And so it came, as ancient proverbs tell, 

li Beneath the Crozier it was good to dwell."* 

Let but their liegemen Holy Faith revere, 

Observe the seasons of the Church's year, 

And, what the Father Abbot held as dear, 

Support the convent's hospitable cheer, 

Its bounteous name o'er other convents near, 

The quarter-day brought easy quittance clear, 

Nor need a vassal for his leasehold fear. 

Was not such peace enough to stir the bile 

Of ev'ry brigand on mainland and isle? 

How should a bankrupt baronage behold 

Those teeming farms, those altars thick with gold, 

And feel no promptings, no reforming call, 

When that New Gospel bade go seize them all? 

Nor whispered avarice in siren tone 

To out- at- elbow lords and squires alone. 

Consider but that rout of vaiiet folk 

And menial curs to menial service broke, 

And criminals fresh loosened from the jail, 

Backs smarting still with strokes at the cart-tail ; 

* " Unterm Kruinmstab gut wohnen." 



41 

And ankles fretted in the public stocks. 

Consider Cromwell, Cranmer, and John Knox, 

" The Reformation's Ruffian," Johnson said 

When some one named the Scotch Reformers' head. 

Without its ruffians could Reform have sped? 

Burnet maintains, himself a living proof, 

That in such helpers lay its main behoof. 

Without a Tudor and his serving knaves, 

Quoth Burnet, Britons still were Popish slaves, 

And furious lechery and lust of gain, 

It was, that broke the Roman Church's chain. 

When Achab covets peaceful Naboth's wealth 

False accusation does the work of stealth. 

False accusation! weapon dear to all 

Whose hate or greed would work the Church's 

fall — 
The good old trick the Romanists to catch, 
First hatch your plot, then find the plot you hatch ; 
Each true Reformer has it in his notes 
From Otto Bismarck back to Titus Oates. 
To prove their guilt the monks to trial bring 
And share their goods between the court and king. 
The oligarchy take the Church domains, 
The people get a Poor Law for their pains. 
It sends a creeping shudder through the frame, 
To contemplate that victory of shame. 
Often had nations conquered been before, 
But never conquest such vile aspect wore. 
Unhappy land ! unhappy English race ! 
Again condemned to take the helot's place. 



42 

Helot to whom ! to mean or hoggish kings, 

A turncoat mob of coroneted things, 

The nation's robbers and the poor's despair, 

Engrossing what the abbots used to share, 

Monopolists, evictors, profligate, 

Oppressors of Old England's Church and State. 

For thrice an age the locust caste shall reign, 

And pilfer profit from the people's pain. 

Nor then shall pass the black result away, 

A rooted evil ends not in a day. 

While Seymours, Dudleys, Eussells and the rest, 

Paulets and Cecils, land and rule possest, 

And revelled on the captive country's best, 

Tippled and fed, and diced, and fought and 

swore, 
Jobbed and rejobbed and jobbed again once more; 
While mitres fell to panders by the score,* 
And livings portioned off the patron's whore; 

* " The place of the clergyman in society had been com- 
" pletely changed by the Keformation. . . For one who made 
" the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants . . . 
" Perhaps, after some years of service, he was presented to a 
" living sufficient to support him. . . . With his cure he was 
*' expected to take a wife. The wife had ordinarily been in the 
" patron's service, and it was well if she was not suspected of 
" standing too high in the patron's favour. . . Even so late as 
" the time of George the Second, the keenest of all observers 
" of life and manners remarked that in a great household the 
" chaplain was the resource of a lady's maid whose character 
" had been blown upon, and who was therefore forced to give 
" up hopes of catching the steward." — Macaulay's History of 
England, Chap. III. 



43 

The Bad, dumb workers of the lane and field, 
The joyless hinds that reap the harvest's yield, 
The grimy serfs that hew the choking mine, 
The squalid wretches doomed to spin and twine, — 
And twine and spin with aching brow and spine, 
Day in, day out, till wasted life's decline, — 
The mass, the millions and the multitude, 
The countless throng to thankless toil subdued, 
What misery shall they not learn to know, 
What anguish sharp, and want corroding slow, 
And sin and crime that from such sorrow flow ? 
The kindly Saxon folk so blithe and staid, 
So nobly minded and so nobly made, 
The fair proud men who held King Edward's 

laws, 
The winsome dames who loved the Virgin's cause, 
Where shall they be when those worst days have 

past, 
And prostrate England, desperate at last, 
Half dares to rise against the Tyrant Caste ? 
Let factory and truck commissions tell 
The depths to which the English people fell. 
By work exhausted, ate up by disease, 
Defrauded of their labour's sordid fees, 
Herding in dens which pity shuns to name, 
Defying decency, devoid of shame, 
Stolid and gloomy, brutalized and grim, 
Apeish of aspect and deformed of limb, — 
These, Reformation, thy fit trophies be 
In these the laurels of thy triumph see. 



44 

The English race cast off the Papal creed ! 

When shall we cease the brazen lie to read ? 

Where then, forsooth, were Reformation's charms, 

When thirty English shires broke out in arms, 

To chase the spoilers of their British home 

And keep the faith Augustin brought from Rome ? 

Methinks it mimicked ill deep gratitude 

For altars wrecked by desecrators rude 

And Holy Faith bemocked by ribalds lewd> 

When Lincoln gave that banner to the sky 

Whose Bleeding Christ again exalted high 

Prefigured Christian Europe's agony.* 

From Lincoln dales to Tweed and Solway's bound, 

From Scotland back to lone Saint Michael's mound, 

In ev'ry vale, by ev'ry river's side, 

From Cheviot slopes to Thames and Severn's tide, 

From where the hamlet sleeps amid its trees 

And where the hum of cities loads the breeze, 

Oppressed with grief, frantic with rage and fear, 

Trader and peasant, raw to warlike gear, 

Quit shop and field for sword and bow and spear. 

Away with sacrilege's foul disguise ! 

Away with Cromwell's craft and Cranmer's lies ! 

Shall minions strip the sacred shrines of old 

That vice may riot on the Church's gold ? 

* A representation of the crucified Saviour formed the great 
standard of the English people in the national insurrections 
on behalf of the Old Faith in the sixteenth century, which 
the court and apostate nobles suppressed by means of armies 
of foreign mercenaries hired with the plunder of the National 
Church. — Vide Hume, Lingard, and Froude. 



45 

Shall jangling knaves and servile slaves succeed 

To Becket, Langton, Dunstan, Cuthbert, Bede ? 

Beneath the Crucified, in order set, 

The thousands of the faithful North have met 

To see that England shall be England yet. 

At York they burn the new sham missals down, 

The high, high mass is sung in Eipon town ; 

The Midland Shires speed on the protest well, 

As Warwick, Worcester, Oxford, Eutland tell ; 

The foreign gospellers but aired their prose 

In Samford Courtney's Church, and Devon rose ; 

And Cornish men in that good cause have sworn 

That kindly Devon shall not stand forlorn. 

The tocsin sounds amid the Cotswold Hills, 

On Essex flats the word is bows and bills, 

And Kentish yeomen downright, prompt, and plain, 

Bring back their monks into their homes again. 

What ! will you summon up your foot and horse ? 

Are these the preachments your divines endorse? 

And how may these, good Gospellers, agree 

With prate of consciences and scriptures free? 

Shall Englishmen be hacked and stabbed and shot 

Because they cherish what you wish forgot ? 

But when or where hath Luther's brood yet 

learned 
The tolerance that Luther's self hath spurned? 
Go then, and ransack close and lane and slum, 
For helpmates fitting for the work to come. 
England is wide, there must be many such 
Too eager the occasion fair to clutch, 



46 

Rufflers and bravos seamed with tavern scars, 
All broken fortunes ripe for civil wars : — 
With abbey lands their vulture greed to pay, 
With court and monarch leading on the way 
How should the spoilers flock not to the prey ! 
Yet let them throng, each fallen peer and knight, 
Alsatian bully and Genevan wight, 
With open Bible, and with brutal might. 
Less apt, perchance, for tournament and joust, 
To nice soldado theories unused, 
Less swift in dicers' quarrels sword to draw, 
More prone to speak of shedding blood with 

awe, 
Those sturdy ploughmen, workmen, men of trade, 
Those tens of thousands bearing bow and blade, 
And burning with their high forefathers' zeal 
When Paynim Soldans fled the English steel, 
May well — But see ! O portent foul and base ! 
Infamy ! multiplied disgrace ! 
Those callous troops of various mien and face 
And differing in language as in race, 
The dregs and sweepings of climes far and near, 
Ears deaf to ruth, eyes blind to pity's tear, 
And lips that wear the hireling's baleful sneer, 
Archer and hackbut man and cannoneer, 
Lanzknechts and spadassins and reiterei, 
Swart outlaws born beneath the Tuscan sky 
And tawny stabbers from rude Germany : 
The standing army of those changing days 
When kings but ill could feudal levies raise, 



47 

And hardly yet had hit upon the plan 
Which finds the soldier in the countryman. 
A motley host, but trained their strength to wield 
In raid and foray and unbattled field, 
Reckless what cause their valour might sustain 
So long as store of plunder paid their pain, 
They were the apt est tools Hell ever sent 
To mar the peace of civil government. 
Of Ghibelline and Guelf begot at first, 
By France and England's guilty quarrels nurst, 
Those children of the slaughter, sack, and storm, 
Shall be the Eed Apostles of Reform. 
Thick and more thick the bravoes crowd to land 
And Tudor' s nobles greet them on the strand. 
Not thus stood Harold when the Norman came, 
Bnt fought and died to everlasting fame. 
Woe, woe for Devon, woe for Norwich town, 
The hireling's arm shall beat their freedom down, 
And English faith in English blood shall drown. 
In Clifton vale and by Bridge water's height 
False Russell had not dared to front the fight, 
But German pikes and Lombard hackbuteers 
Have overthrown the yeomen's sturdy spears. 
Black Spinola to steadfast Oxford leads 
His foreign cutthroats through the Cherwell's meads. 
And Malatesta, name of evil sound, 
Strews Norfolk's sons in death on Norfolk's ground. 
When gallant Kett drew up in Dussingdale, 
Three thousand German horse charged down the 
vale, 



48 

And made the ghastly gap through which rushed in 
The jackal pack that else could never win. 
So when the bandogs bait the stately bull, 
Hang on his neck and down the giant pull, 
A butcher's prentice stealing round behind 
Can slay the victim with a dauntless mind. 
Untrained, half armed, divided and betrayed, 
Their bravest lost, their homes in ruin laid, 
The trampled people bowed beneath the rod, 
And Eeformation could proclaim its God. 
Its God! the New, the Parliamental Thing, 
" Brought in " and " passed" and set before a the. 

King," 
For high Consent and gracious Signet Eing. 
A " Statute Worship :" just as we may say 
A Turnpike Act or Statute Right of Way, 
When v/hipped-up members vote for so-and-so, 
And Ayes shout Aye, and Noes respond with No. 
Debated point " That God is One not more." 
Amendment : "That He is at least a score, 
41 And changes with each region, clime and shore." 
Amendment carried. Comes another clause : 
" That God is always subject to the laws." 
Hear, hear, and cheers, unanimous applause. 
Provision third: u That whoso dares deny, 
" The State's omnipotence God's rights to try, 
" Shall duly hanged and drawn and quartered die." 
Behold the sum of Modern History!* 

* " By what light a Protestant was to steer might be a pro- 
" blem, which at the time of the Eeformation, as ever since, it 



49 

In former Pagan times men used to take 

Some stone or wood and straight an idol make, 

Which having been adopted by the State, 

Was Venus, Mars, or Jupiter the Great. 

And is it not the State that now ordains 

What shall be worshipped in the public fanes ? 

And do not still artificers devise 

What shall be sacred in the nation's eyes? 

True that we now dispense with wood and stone, 

Since altered tastes such usage have outgrown. 

But idol or no idol, what's a name, 

When our substantial process is the same, 

As if we meant a graven god to frame ? 

Idolatry is but a vocal sound, 

Its substitute can easily be found. 

The form the manufactured god may wear 

Doth just as little relevancy bear. 

Human or brute, hero, or calf or ape, 

Monster of blood or beauty-breathing shape, 

It matters not : nor whether gold or clay, 

Cedar or oak the artist's thought display. 

Such aids but body forth and grossly tell 

The fact of which the image is the shell. 

The thing, the pseudo-god, far deeper lies, 

The mind has made it and the mind applies 

The notion of it to some outward guise. 

" would perplex a theologian to decide ; but in practice, the 
" law of the land which established one exclusive mode of 
" faith was the only safe, as in ordinary circumstances, it was 
" upon the whole, the most eligible guide." 

Hallam's Literary History, Part I. Chap. VZ 

E 



50 

What proves one statue Pan; another Jove? 

What shows an urchin archer Lord of Love ? 

The mind alone, the mind that cast the types, 

Gave Love his bow, and Pan his rustic pipes, 

And Jove the bolts his knotted right hand gripes. 

Take but the mind's activity away, 

And how much godship will the loss outstay ? 

Where then the jot of difference between 

Dead Paganisms and what our times have seen? 

The ancient heathen framed within his thought 

The concept of the deity he sought ; 

Fed by occasion as all thought is fed, 

The likeness grew within its author's head ; 

At length developed, dim and rude at first, 

The mental product to expression burst. 

So far the modern takes the selfsame course, 

Excogitates his creed by fictive force, 

And makes himself his own religion's source ; 

Alike each deifies his private views, 

Which may the polytheist name refuse ? 

How many were the Gods of Eome and Greece, 

Compared to our divinities' increase ? 

Translate the sects of olden Pagan years 

In language of our books and gazetteers. 

Venusian, Jupiterian, and Marsite, 

Plutonian, Apollonian, Neptunite, — 

The list were but a handful to the swarm 

Of jangling heresies hatched by Reform. 

When set beside our latter-day account, 

Olympus is a monotheic mount. 



51 

The ancients' turn was not for abstract modes, 

Their minds went not by metaphysic roads, 

And what they worshipped, that they loved to 

mark, 
As strong, or supple, foul or fair, or dark ; 
And then a touch of wit forbad 
Unlike ideas should as likes be clad. 
The Lutherano-Calvinistic brood 
Of gods disguise themselves beneath a hood 
Of anonymity : Wisdom and Good, 
And Providence, and Majesty, and Might, 
Euler and Lord, Intelligence and Light. 
Like wily rebels thus they make their own 
Of titles proper to the Godhead's Throne. 
But though in guise of unity be-drest, 
The fraud will out when tried by simplest test. 
Have polytheists now-a-days left off 
The graven shapes that were the Christian's scoff ? 
So much of homage are they forced to pay 
To feelings planted by the Church's sway ? 
What then ? The only question left to ask, 
Will tear in shreds the hypocritic mask. 
Suppose that now were centuries ago ; 
Suppose that where the waves of Tiber flow, 
A skilful Pagan sculptor had been told 
To symbolize in figures clear and bold 
The worship of the sects we hear and see : 
How many chiselled idols would agree 
In face or form, in lineament or limb ? 
Asleep or savage, lecherous or grim, 

e 2 



52 

How would the various deities appear 

Which thrice a hundred bigotries revere ! 

Nay, though the artist should nine times essay 

The fearsome task, nine times the Furies pray, 

Invoke each name of dark and dreadful sound, 

Black Tartarus and Stygian Gulf profound, 

And spells to make the nether shades recoil, 

Still must his hands refuse the baleful toil, 

His heart grow faint, his nerve and sinew fail, 

When he would strive to fix the horror pale, 

The ghastly scowl and eye of stony hate, 

Of that dread demon whom no tortures sate, 

No victims melt, no tears propitiate, 

The gloomy King, by Calvin called to reign, 

By terrors compassed and eternal pain, 

The cynic Fiend that sneers and slays the while, 

And damns whole generations with a smile. 

But sage Spectator cries in triumph mild : 

" At least Broad Churchmen may not be reviled 

" On such a score. Let other sects restrict 

4i Their adoration by the worship pickt 

" To suit their taste ; more large the Broad Church 

aim, 
" That teaches man all worships are the same, 
'* And, comprehensive of remotest creeds, 
" Nor forms an idol nor an idol needs." 
If this but means the difference must be 
But small 'twixt tweedledum and tweedledee, 
Then sage Spectator hardly makes it plain, 
To mark its Broad Church from its No Church vein. 



53 

But this apart, were they Broad Churchmen 

too, 
Who, as the sceptic Pagans used to do, 
Took ev'ry God as equally divine, 
And poured libations forth at ev'ry shrine ? 
Nay, when the Caesar, as old legends tell, 
Erected in his oratory cell, 
Not Pagan names alone, but side by side 
With Jupiter and Mars, the Christ who died 
On Calvary, nor felt contented yet 
Till Father Abraham and Orpheus met 
On even terms of gilded godship set ; 
Say, could Imperial piety devise 
A plan more fair in undogmatic eyes 
For choosing deities from every sort, 
Had Stanley's self been Flamen to the Court ? 
Good lack, our Progress since the days of yore, 
Has it but left us where we were before ? 
How sad originality should tend 
To prove us plagiarizers in the end. 
The course of error is a beaten track, 
Its Pegasus a most familiar hack ; 
Localities and times may lend details, 
It is the common concept which avails 
To stamp identity. In ev'ry age 
A Broad Church forms that sorry second stage 
Through which idolatries descending fall, 
Until they finish in no faith at all. 
When waking conscience and instinctive sense 
Would force impiety from its pretence, 



54 

When brawling sects would haste to pass away, 
Nor falsehood dare affront the breaking day, 
Then comes a doubledealing juggle in, 
With glozing arts of compromise to win 
The field once more for folly and for sin. 
What was the Gnostic medley that once spread 
From Egypt's land as from a fountain head 
Of subtlest paradox ; what made the plan 
That through its endless emanations ran? 
What but the vain desire to mix and blend, 
Or, as our phrasers speak, to comprehend, 
The Law of Christ with creeds and crotchets 

grown 
From speculations of the mind alone. 
Our Broad Church draws the line at Buddha's Tooth, 
And equally excludes the God of Truth. 
From heresies that contradict and clash, 
Reflect each whim and ape each passion rash, 
To dull indifference that takes no heed 
Of true or false, of good grain or of weed; 
From Broad Church sloughs to quagmires yet 

more deep 
Where Caesar's reptiles in debasement creep, 
The world had fallen: could it fall still more? 
W 7 hat folly still was left it to adore? 
Demented Science struts into the light, 
And builds its altar to Primeval Night 
In self-created crudity beholds 
The life that quickens and the might that moulds. 
Fitz Lamarck tells how vaulting sea slugs rose, 



55 

Through toads and beasts, to chimney pots and 

clothes, 
How crocodiles developed baboons tall, 
And knows a parent's features in them all. 
Gnatho's hot zeal to root out moral ill 
By plump disproving intellect and will, 
Proclaims at last from vivisections keen, 
That man is but a flesh-and-blood machine ! 
Thus, thus, audacity our good sense crams, 
With padded, foisted, self-convicted shams. 
And like quack doctors at a country fair, 
Each theorist extols his nostrums rare, 
And makes his profit as the yokels stare. 
Give this one's automatic nose a bend, 
With toe salute this other's tailless end: 
Will either, say you, have a thought to use 
His jargon as a plaster for his bruise, 
The tweak deduce from active molecules, 
The kick explain by evolution's rules? 
Nay, but, suppose — and mark the story well- 
Some man-machine whose clockwork doctrines 

tell 
Our roughs and thieves and knaves of high degree 
That Nature makes them rogues and villains be, 
That vices are inherited desires, 
And crimes but pre -arrangements of the wires ; 
Some thing that abdicates the human name 
Were chosen out — Laughter and Shame — 
For what of all imaginable posts? 
For visitor throughout the nation's coasts 



56 

To each academy of studious youth. 

With right to judge if scientific truth — 

The word was Truth — had been pursued 

In spirit fitting for so high a good! 

Did the anthropoid the office take? 

Aye faith, and when it came its rounds to make 

Whatever college, school or learned seat 

Refused to hold the Ancient Faith effete, 

It blotted out as backward, rude, and base, 

If not a danger, surely a disgrace, 

And only worthy to be bade begone. 

Now was not that a shrewd automaton? 

To giiage the godhead of the Pontiff- State, 

Go view the Commons in a Church debate. 

No scene besides so suited to inspire, 

A rich amusement which can never tire;^ 

No moment else which can so well unite, 

Each stimulant to comical delight ; 

And long ago all critics have confest, 

That only then the House is at its best. 

What men would deem its duty's proper sphere, 

Can often scarce arrest its eye or ear. 

For generations it had slumbered sound, 

While cotton lords the toiling masses ground, 

And fever dens, and ignorance and drink, 

Drew down the millions to destruction's brink. 

As idly fell upon its torpid sense, 

The wrongs of tenants left without defence, 

While felon landlord and crowbar brigade 

A kingdom's homes in roofless ruin laid. 



On India nights while sanguine subs rehearse 

A subject empire's lapse from bad to worse, 

If here and there amid deserted rows 

A Solon sits, he only sits to doze. 

But let the question be some contest nice 

Of Rites and Articles, and in a trice 

From club and smoking room with genial flush 

The Anglic Ecumenic Fathers rush. 

The lusty tide sweeps through the guarded door, 

Fills ev'ry bench and crowds the central floor; 

Nor doubt nor somnolency more you trace ; 

Erect each form, alert each glowing face, 

Each right leg tense to spring, each eye to glare, 

And nail the Speaker with a frenzied stare. 

Polemic fervour fires the ardent files, 

Save where some Irish member yawns or smiles. 

To-night the Commons regulate the Church, 

And late arrivals will be found in lurch ; 

The crush is great, the galleries but small, 

So hasten early to Westminster Hall. 

The whisper circles through the curious town, 

And fresh details the first excitement crown ; 

For certain Gladstone joins the coming fray, 

And Benjamin Bar- Benjamin, they say. 

All hand-books which upon the matter treat 

For weeks has Harcourt made his daily meat ; 

111 must antagonistic pundits fare, 

When Harcourt brings his pinchbeck lore to bear ! 

The Colonels too, and mighty men of beer, 

Will in the theologic lists appear, 



58 

As doughty points of doctrine to decide, 

As praise up Purchase, Temperance deride. 

With meaning accent, and with look profound, 

Our Chrysostoms the programme buzz around ; 

Should they feel shyness who themselves do know 

To be the heroes of the raree show ? 

Westminster Palace ! Wide its fame has spread, 

The Nation's Palace of gilt gingerbread. 

What country cousin but must come to scan 

Its gew-gaw pinnacles and sprawling plan? 

Enter : it awes thee not nor doth it grow 

Upon thy reverence. Its garish glow 

Of parti-coloured tints, its staring walls, 

Its vestibules that swallow up its halls, 

Its laboured ornament that cannot cloak 

The tasteless waste of Puritanic folk, 

Its paint and gloss that nought so much portray 

As East end millionaire's West end display, 

May interest, may puzzle, may amuse, 

May dazzle with kaleidoscopic hues, 

But in true architecture hold the part 

Of Tussaud's waxworks in Athenian art. 

And yet the race that make this daub their pride, 

Could raise the noble Abbey by its side, 

Still undefaced by time's corroding stain. 

The race, but not the men. Majestic fane! 

In generations past the temple meet 

Of cloistered faith, and now the snug retreat 

Where pliant bonzes, vacuous of creed, 

Butter their crumbs, and glory in the deed. 



59 

The House is met, the Speaker in his chair, 

The Ladies' Cage shows its three dozen fair. 

The Press has drawn its twenty note-books out, 

Prepared to chronicle the op'ning bout. 

Shall we too spend good paper, pens, and ink, 

Eecording what stout squires and brewers think 

Of canon law and liturgy, forsooth, 

The eastward posture, ante-Nicene truth, 

Mysterious sounds, of which they know as much 

As Fiji Islanders of Double Dutch ! 

Will not a penny buy the full report, 

The quips and cranks, the bathos and the sport, 

Plus all the sound and fury, froth and foam, 

Your member pumps up at the name of Rome ? 

Supremest State ! Again the paean raise ! 

Supremest State ! accept our parting praise. 

Save Catholics alone who now remain, 

To flout thy deity and spurn thy chain? 

Sceptic and heretic thy menials are. 

The Russian Schism lies crouched before the Tsar, 

The sects of Strauss and Hegel loud proclaim 

Their title to the reptile's grovlling name. 

The petroleur is free in Leman's vale, 

The priest must choose twixt exile and the jail, 

And Mexico, to prove its Freethought's fruits^ 

Expels its nuns and keeps its prostitutes. 



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